Blacader Aisle… from scan to interactive 3D visualisation

Last term, students on the DDS’ MSc International Heritage Visualisation course worked as a team to scan the Blacader Aisle at Glasgow Cathedral (access arranged with thanks to Historic Scotland) and the surrounding area. 3D laser scanning (using a Leica C10) was performed over a few days, along with a lot of photography to try to obtain some high quality images for use for texture in the final visualisation.

3D laser scan point cloud of Glasgow Cathedral

Students then worked in smaller groups to produce visualisations – this video highlights part of one interactive visualisation running in Unity3D. As well as being able to view the Aisle from different viewpoints, users can also interact with the visualisation to learn more about the windows and the carvings above them.

The aisle (and cathedral) building is incredibly irregular. For example, each window is unique – while all have a similar shape, no two have the same dimensions. The skirt of the aisle likewise has many complex forms. By building this visualisation from data acquired with a 3D laser scanner, we are able to verify the detail to high degree of accuracy – which then has potential to allow models like this to find additional uses in conservation and preservation.

We are importing 3D models from laser scanning and photogrammetry into an MMO platform which you can try out at http://wa692.avayalive.com Could we try and import the cathedral into this platform please? Would you have it in an obj file and textures?

The finished 3D model is the property of the students, we don’t have the rights to release it. For information, the overall level of detail is very focussed on the Blacader Aisle highlighted in the video, so not all of the Cathedral is modelled to the same level of detail.

But we are keeping options open and under discussion for possible future releases of some of our 3D assets, and we do have a commercial team who do a lot of 3D scanning work worldwide. If you want more information on commercial terms, Brian McGeough is the person to contact ( http://www.gsa.ac.uk/research/dds-profiles/m/mcgeough-brian/ ). For open/free resources, any future releases will be publicised through the blog (and the usual social media…)